1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method, system, and program for a data transfer operation with respect to source and target storage devices in a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) extended copy command allows one application in a network to issue a command to another device, referred to as the copy manager, to copy data from one set of source logical devices to another set of target logical devices, where the source and target logical devices may be separate from the system initiating the command. The extended copy command is issued to a copy manager that is responsible for copying data from the source device(s) to the destination device(s). Further details of the SCSI extended copy command are described in the publication “SCSI Primary Commands-2 (SPC-2)”, Rev. 20, Reference No. ISO/IEC 14776-312 : 200x (Jul. 18, 2001), which publication is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
In a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN), each device is identified with a fixed identifier that does not change, such as a World Wide Name (WWN) assigned at the factory, and a temporary Fibre Channel static address assigned during initialization by the Fibre Channel fabric. If an administrator or program is unaware of these changes to the static Fibre Channel address of the device, then an extended copy operation using an invalid Fibre Channel address as the source or target device would result in an error. If the old incorrect address points to a different device than the one intended to be the source or target, then the wrong storage device would be involved in the copy operation. This could result in the unintended loss of important data by overwriting an unintended target storage device or copying an unintended source.